Former WGN radio reporter Larry Schreiner, a legendary crime reporter who covered the John Wayne Gacy serial killings, the Palatine murders and the death of Mayor Harold Washington, passed away Thursday night of cardiac arrest, according to his son Mark Schreiner. He was 72.

Schreiner began his career as a police officer in Skokie and then in Chicago before trading his badge for a notepad and video camera and becoming one of the first reporters to adopt the practice of shooting footage of crime scenes.

“He loved that stuff,” his son said. “He’s always been friends with and a fan of the fire department. He liked getting those stories out to the public.”

His skill and dogged spirit as a reporter were remembered Thursday by a former colleague and competitor, Chicago Fire Department spokesman Larry Langford, who often covered the same street crime stories as Schreiner in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Working the early morning shift as a reporter and anchor for WIND-AM 560, Langford generally overlapped with Schreiner, who mainly worked overnight.

Langford said Schreiner would shoot video footage overnight, make copies and sell it to the local TV news stations in time for their morning broadcasts. As the day progressed, he’d talk about his overnight stories on WGN-AM 720 radio.

The two were competitors, said Langford, and would often try to see who could broadcast their story first. But after seeing each other at the scenes of crimes, fires and other mayhem, he said, the two eventually started tipping each other off on stories if one of them was too far away to make it to the scenes. Since there were no cell phones back then, the two would communicate through a private radio system.

Langford said the whole time, the stations thought the reporters in the field were all fighting with each other, but as far as his relationship with Schreiner: “We cooperated more than management ever knew.”

Langford remembered Schreiner beating him to the grisly murder scene at the home of serial killer Gacy in December 1978. Since Langford was too far south make it to the Gacy home in unincorporated Norwood Park Township, Schreiner made sure he’d know about it.

Langford said he outfitted Schreiner’s car with police and fire scanners so that he could get a jump on potential stories unfolding overnight.

“He and I were the reporters who listened to the scanners more than everybody else in the city,” said Langford, now a spokesman for the Chicago Fire Department. “We had scanners when they were rare and hard to come by.”

Langford also acknowledged how Schreiner had some of the best sources, and even friends, in the police and fire departments.

“He knew everybody,” said Langford. “He knew where to call for everything.”

Schreiner left WGN Radio in 2005, but he was back on air earlier this year during a Valentine’s Day special with WGN’s Garry Meier, his son said.

“You could see that he just lit up being around people who were fans of his for so long and being back, able to talk to Chicago on WGN radio,” Mark Schreiner said. “He really liked that chance. He was a very personable guy.”

Schreiner was born in Chicago on April 12, 1942, and was a lifelong resident of the area. In recent years, Schreiner served as a commissioner on the Wauconda Fire District in Wauconda, Ill.

“He enjoyed working with firemen and supporting firemen with what they do in terms of helping people,” Mark Schreiner said. “The amount of respect he had for the young guys who wanted to be firemen, he had a ton of respect for them.”

Schreiner is survived by his twin sons, Mark and Matthew, and two grandchildren.

Mark Schreiner followed in his father’s footsteps and is a TV and radio reporter in Tampa, Fla.

Services begins at 9 a.m. Wednesday at Cumberland, with a funeral mass 10 a.m. at St. Eugene Catholic Church at 7958 W. Foster in Chicago. A burial service will follow at Acacia Park Cemetery, 7800 W. Irving Park Road in Norridge.